Note: See fodderstompf.com for the a-z run down, there's no point in copying and pasting it here.

Context

"If you really want to know, I think the Sex Pistols failed . . . miserably . . . it was a bit embarrassing.
The other people in the band never understood what I was singing about." - Johnny Rotten

After the Sex Pistols crashed and burned, John Lydon rose like a phoenix from the ashes of the punk behemoth to create the experimentalist post-punk band PiL. The goal of the band, in Lydon's own words was "anti-music of any kind" on account that he was "tired of melody." The name of the band itself is tied intimately to the tragedy of the Sex Pistols as Lydon recounts:

"Poor Sid. The only way he could live up to what he wanted everyone to believe about him was to die.
That was tragic, but more for Sid than anyone else. He really bought his public image."

In other words, the name of the band means exactly this, "Our image is limited." With that, Lydon rescinded all ties with the Sex Pistols, furthermore, PiL's debut single, Public Image was an attack on the Pistols and their manager Malcom McClaren (who fired Lydon after a show at San Francisco's Winterland in January 1978).

Other Ramblings

The line-up that I listed at the top of this write-up is hardly complete, yet it does include the three founding members of PiL (before everyone hopped in and out of the band like a revolving door with Lydon holding the whole thing together). The band released their best work during the time that those three were working together - end of story. That said, 1980'sParis au Printemps (never released Stateside) is the formulation of the band's past formlessness, "which is to say that if they could reproduce their apparently inchoate, unpremeditated music letter-perfect live (and they could), then it wasn't really orderless or even all that experimental. Yet it was visceral" (Gilmore 155). Two nights in Paris, in spring, represent the greatest moment of their more than decade run.